Wellbeing, happiness and personal growth have become central issues in contemporary spiritualities, despite of suffering, physiological pain or mortification. As Talal Asad (2009) has pointed out in his ‘Genealogies of Religion’, medieval theologies considered the torment of the body and suffering in general as optimal spiritual discipline, while modern theology as well as secular morality agree to consider mortification and pain as archaic methods of uncivilized spirituality. Considering it, we wonder how this radical turn has been possible. The point of this paper/communication is to take into account the many and complex factors which converged to give birth the contemporary therapeutic spiritualities, while it is seen here as an historical result of Modernity. For that, we will explore the general relationship between religious experience and wellbeing/sickness, the convergence between therapeutic practices and spirituality understandings, and the historical contexts in which the notion of ‘spirituality’ gained autonomy from ‘religious’ realm.

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